Today, same cancer survival rates in East & West

Survival of cancer patients in East and West Germany aligned

24/08/2012

The survival rate of cancer patients in East and West Germany has stabilized in the twenty years after reunification and today is at about the same level nationwide. This is the result of a joint study by the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and the eleven German cancer registries.

Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg have been investigating the development of survival rates in cancer in East and West Germany since reunification on the basis of data from the state cancer registries. Today, cancer patients in East and West survive approximately the same amount of time, whereas in the decades before reunification the survival rate of West German patients was still significantly higher than in the East. Lina Jansen and Prof. Hermann Brenner of the DKFZ. The epidemiologists considered this a sign of improving medical care in the eastern German states.

Before the reunification lower cancer survival rate in East Germany
According to information from the DKFZ, the data show „from the 1970s and 1980s that people with cancer in West Germany survived significantly longer than those affected behind the Iron Curtain.“ In the period of diagnosis 1984 to 1985, for example, of the colon cancer patients in the former GDR survived only 28 percent longer than five years with the disease. In West Germany, on the other hand, the survival rate of colorectal cancer patients in the years 1979 to 1983 was already 44 percent. Substantial differences in the 5-year survival rate were also found in prostate cancer patients (46 percent East, 68 percent West) and breast cancer patients (52 percent East, 68 percent West), according to the DKFZ.

Cancer survival rate today in East and West almost identical
For the first time, the scientists of the German Epidemiological Cancer Registry (GEKID) and the DKFZ have analyzed the development of the cancer survival rate since reunification. Based on the data on more than one million cancers from the eleven German state cancer registries, the epidemiologists were able to compare the survival rates of cancer patients in eastern and western Germany. The current study was based on a detailed analysis of cancer survival rates from 2002 to 2006 for 25 different cancers. The researchers were able to show that today the 5-year survival rate differs by less than three percent in 20 of the 25 cancers examined between East and West „and thus be considered as nearly identical“ can, reports the DKFZ.

Unified health care system in East and West Germany
Only „cancer of the oral cavity, esophagus, gallbladder and melanoma“ (Skin cancer), the survival rate in West Germany was still significantly higher than in the East, write the experts of the DKFZ. On the other hand, the 5-year survival rate was slightly better in leukemia patients in eastern Germany. Demonstrate according to Professor Brenner „the adjusted cancer survival rates in the old and new federal states that the unified health care system has created comparable health opportunities for people in East and West.“ Although the economic conditions are still different, have become „the dramatic survival differences after cancer are almost balanced“, so burner. Today it is therefore far „It makes more sense to examine the influence of socioeconomic differences on cancer survival within individual regions than to think in the outdated categories of East and West.“ (Fp)

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Picture: Picture lear_21, Wikimedia Commons